Reviews and Comments

I see why people rate this one so highly. I burned it down in about 2 days, which is both due to it's relatively short length, and it's easy but engaging style.

I won't go into specifics, since I think I'm the last one around here to read it, so just the 10,000 foot view.

Some books are really dense and hard to get through, and at the end, leave you wondering if any of the characters progressed at all. Some books move so fast that might swear that the book read itself while you slept, for all the continuity you experienced. Right in the middle are those books that move quickly, but are written in a way that leaves you feeling like you aren't missing anything you need, or are weighted down with anything you don't. This book is an example of the last type.

Someone else mentioned that it felt like a great homage to "Starship Troopers", and I totally see that. As a battlelogue of one soldier's exciting-turned-regretful-turned-accepting journey through war with a veritable nature's field journal of unashamedly bizarre xenobiology, there was no obtuse technobabble, and conversely, no technology that I felt was "practically magic" by anthropological definition. It just worked. Actually, it worked a bit too well: near the end, I was envisioning how this could be turned into a movie. I have no idea if it's on that track, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least (I checked; it is).

I would have given this another 1/2 star (leaving room for the "perfect five star book") if not for the occasional bouts of 'Crichtonosis', when one character is used strictly to set up another as a mouthpiece for showing off the author's cool theory/grasp of science/need to educate in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable read. Honestly, though, in some cases, this really irritates me. Here, though, it fit because the...two?...times it happened, it wasn't very drawn out, and was positioned at a turning point for the story, making it one part necessary, one part "look at me".

It had been a while since I read the preceding "The Half-Made World", but I had remembered just enough to be able to connect the two. It didn't really help, except that the first book established the bizarre presence of the Line and the Gun, and introduced John Creedmore and Liv Alverhyusen.

"The Rise of Ransom City" is really more "Gears of the City" than "The Half-Made World", which I liked. Gilman writes a mean city -- alive, descriptive, both protagonist and antagonist. The last portion of this one leaves the steampunk Wild West schitck for the urban steampunk aesthetic, and I appreciated that.

I don't remember if Harry Ransom shows up in "The Half-Made World" or not, but in this one, his story crosses over through his time spent traveling with Creedmore and Dr. Alverhyusen before returning to being all about him and his Ransom Process, told in memoir style, from his supposed remote colony of Ransom City.

The first half of the book was rather slow; it was a diary of some frontier shyster who was showboating all over the landscape, traveling from town to town with The Apparatus in tow. He'd grandstand in front of the rubes, displaying his magical wireless energy transmission device, which ended up ending badly more often than not.

The second half kicks off after the Apparatus destroys a town and kills an Agent of the Gun, which puts him squarely in the sights of everyone: the Gun, the Line, and the New Red Republic view his device as a weapon that they all must have. Ransom's naivete lands him in Jasper City where he learns that his idol, inventor and magnate Mr. Baxter, is a puppet for the Line. Soon, he takes Baxter's place and is forced to perfect the Apparatus for the Engines, who are finding that their war is not going well for themselves.

Overall, it was an OK read. Very well constructed, but the beginning half put me off, as it jumped around between present day, flashbacks, and observational diary entries of the people and places Ransom encountered.

I suppose if you're a Gilman fan, and liked "The Half-Made World", or are at least a completionist, this will be required, but I don't know that I'd demand that you read both the first and this book otherwise.

I picked this up because reviews on the upcoming Halo 4 mentioned that the narrative was a little dense if one wasn't well versed in the particular back story of the Forerunners. The Forerunner Saga (trilogy) was mentioned specifically.

The Forerunners were one of the many species created by the Precursors (along with the humans), but at some point, the Forerunners wiped out the Precursor civilization. When the story opens, we learn that 10,000 years prior, the humans lost a war with the Forerunners, and had been "devolved" into two different species, sharing a sort of aboriginal lifestyle on what will later be known as Earth. Two of these proto-humans are hired by a Forerunner named Bornstellar (who's "seeking himself" through adventure) to guide him to some Precursor ruins on Earth, which turns out to be an ancient isolation chamber called a cryptum. Inside is a suspended Forerunner called the Didact, who was responsible for the defeat of the human race.

The story is actually about the introduction of the Halos when they were "new", as Forerunner weapons built to defend against the Flood. The humans had initially encountered the Flood, and had actually defeated it during their war with the Forerunners, but the remaining humans refused to give up their secrets to their conquerors out of spite, and in the hopes that the Flood infection would wipe out the Forerunner race. The two humans, Bornstellar, and the Didact, are lead across the universe by a mysterious purpose, which eventually leads to the downfall of the Forerunners.

This is a very "un-Halo" series. If a Halo fan is looking for a lot of shooting and bro-fisting action like in the games, they'll be sorely disappointed. The style is rather dense, evoking a different way of thinking that's fairly alien...which is perfect for a story told from the perspective of the Forerunner Bornstellar. We get a look at the civilization of the Forerunners, which I found to be very alien in itself. Although it falls into some typical sci-fi traps (society organized by caste, with each caste dedicated to s single task in society), a lot of the technology seemed to be a little on the deux ex machina side: star ships that form themselves, chairs and control panels that just form out of the ground...a lot of conveniently present materials. Considering how this advanced technology belonged to the Forerunners, who lived for thousands of each, who created the Halos, and who could devolve living beings, I gave it a pass. The Forerunner culture was presented as very powerful, very old, and as one might expect, very conflicted.

Anyone familiar with the Halo universe will find some touchstones here, but a good portion of the book felt like "10,000 BC" mashed up with Halo. There was a distinct primal bent to the narrative, which I found was pretty necessary to set up the second book in the series.

I gave it 3 stars for being a Halo book (not necessarily accessible to everyone), and for being just alien enough in a lot of places that my eyes glazed over out of sheer overwhelming "alienness". I suspect that it'll pay off, though, once I get into Halo 4.

I'll start by admitting that I'm not a zombie fan: It's a genre that's really overstayed it's welcome. However, I'm always up for a decent story, well written characters, and the possibility of a new twist on a tired motif. Sadly, this book had none of those things.

The biggest issue I had with this book is that the author suffers from "Brownian Crichtonitis": devoting huge swaths of the book to long-winded exposition, soap-boxing, or "look at this cool theory I thought up!", which MAY touch briefly on the plot, but more often than not yanks the reader out of the urgency of the situation. The segment comparing "Star Wars" to "Dune" was, by far, the worst offense.

The characters didn't stand out in the least. I only remember their names because I just finished the book yesterday. There were practically no development in any of them, and what little there might have been seemed so sudden due to a lack of relevant back-story for anyone. Again, had the author cut down on the incongruous monologue/dialog fluff, there might have been room to make me care about the characters.

I get that this is a "zombie book", and it seems all zombie stories aren't about the living, but about the dead. The living are the minor players and are used to showcase how foul the zombies are. I gave this book two stars because when the zombies entered the picture, they really did shine. Most zombie theory is squarely in the science category, and this is no exception. It would have bolstered the story to get more into that aspect, but the author painted himself into a corner with the other, more frightening focus of the book, which was the rule of the Church.

After the collapse of American society, the Church became the authority, banning scientific study and returning the country to the era of witch burning. Zombies are bad enough, but having to deal with what must be a biological epidemic and not being able to tackle it biologically meant that the author COULD NOT offer a satisfactory resolution, and the characters are basically screwed.

The ending...well, I wasn't even aware that the ending was near. It pretty much drew to a screeching halt, with what little plot traffic there was piling up in a heap on the last few pages. It sounds like there might be room for a sequel or two. I hope that if the author decides to tackle this opportunity that he spends more time on the characters, and less in using them as mouthpieces for unrelated exposition.

It's kind of hard to picture EVE The Game meshing with EVE The Novels, since The Game is known for the "bad behavior" of it's players, while The Novels feature characters who are respectful, even in war. But that's what I enjoy so much about these books: they breath life into a world known only for it's controversies.

I didn't know at first that this was a continuation of The Empyrean Age, because it's been so long since I read that one that I didn't recognize the characters. Like TEA, Templar One was written and released to coincide with a major game update. For TEA, it was Apocrypha and the appearance of "w-space" and the Sleepers. For Templar One, we learn the back story of just how DUST 514 begins to fit into the EVE universe.

I haven't read a sci-fi war story like this one since the early BattleTech books, where the characterizations manage to shine through the level of technical name-dropping that's absolutely required for the work to earn it's cred as a tie-in. Gonzales either has an army of EVE lore scholars feeding him authentic sounding intel, or he's a sci-fi tech writing genius, able to mix imagery and technobabble in equal measure without it sounding forced and over-the-top.

It's been quite a while since I've played EVE, and while I recognize many of the organization, ship, and place names, there were a lot more that just went over my head, so I don't think one needs to be a fan of EVE to get something out of this book. Gonzales does a great job of explaining what you need to know in just the right way so even if you can't put a name to a pixel, you still know that seeing a titan warp into the sector is Really Bad News.

Oy. Finally finished this one after a few months on hiatus. I really liked Mieville's other books that I've read so far. I ended up liking this one, but the style of it was just a bit dense because the characters speak and think in stream of consciousness...which is ironic, because it's really how real people sometimes speak and think.

The concept is pretty decent: two cities, somewhere in what might be Eastern Europe, occupy the same physical space, but they don't get along. Citizens can see activity in the other space, but it's illegal to acknowledge that it was seen. Spend too much time staring into the other city, or accidentally (or purposefully) step into the other space, and the transgressor is taken away by Breach, a CIA-like organization tasked with keeping the boundaries of the two cities apart.

The plot revolves around the possibility of a THIRD city lying somewhere unseen, and what happens to people who believe in it's existence. A young exchange student is murdered in one city and dumped in the other, which begins an investigation that must span both cities, and which leads to the question of the existence of this mysterious third city, whether it exists or not, and if it does, who might want it to stay hidden.

There's a lot of made-up politics here, combined with a police investigative drama, which is really secondary to the characters of Ul Quoma and Beszel, the two overlapping cities. Pretty much every scene deals with the cooperative police inspectors having to walk a fine line between getting the answers they need, and violating the divide between the cities and invoking Breach. It's a good read for those who like their urban environments as first-rate characters, although the odd cadence of the language of the characters and the prose itself in some places might lead to less immersion then an idea like this one deserves.